Replacing WHS

[BitRausch]

Hi,

Spending the last 3 days and 2 nights trying to repair my windows home server without any luck (lost 1,6 TB of data ) I start looking for an alternative. Which brought me here. Now before I start trying amahi I thought it would be a good idea to ask some question up front:

My specs:
GA-EG31M-S2L
Intel E5200 C2D
2 GB RAM
1x 250 GB HD SATA
3x 1 TB HD SATA
1 Realtek NIC (onboard)

My questions:
1) Is this hardware supported?
2) Can I use the 250 GB HD as a system boot drive and use the 3xTB HD in a software raid 5 configuration?
3) Do I need 2 NIC's for the server?
4) Is there something like the WHS Hompage available so people can access shared resources over the internet? or do I have to setup something like a ftp server?
5) Since I am using a mix of windows os (W2K3,W2K8,Windows 7) - how can I backup/restore (bare metal restore supported)? Incremental backup supported?
6) Do I have to install any Backup client on my clients and will it be compatible with the OS mentioned above?

Sorry if I ask questions which are probably answered some where in the forum but honestly I am too tired to search and read all the documents after the last three days. Please bare with me... I will read the documents and postings but for now - if some one can provide me with short answers I would appreciate very much...

Thanks in advance for any answers, hints and suggestions ...

Regards
BitRausch
Germany

[moredruid]

sorry to hear you lost 1.6TB worth of data

quick answers (most of them are indeed answered more in-depth on this board, look around if you feel up to it again):
1 hardware looks OK, you have an Intel chipset and this is fairly well supported in linux
2 yes you can; however software RAID in Linux is _very_ hard to get right
3 nope, 1 NIC is sufficient
4 not yet; however you can use vpn, but I'm not sure if this meets your needs
5 pba (mostly) works as an offline bare-metal backup, kind of like a Ghost image. Use the Windows programs for file/folder backups.
6 nope, unless this is not provided by the OS (Windows Backup on some versions). You will backup to a share.

[BitRausch]

Thank you very much moredruid!!. Exactly what I wanted to know.
I will give amahi a try - tomorrow
Need to get some sleep first...

[pjcrux]

4) Is there something like the WHS Hompage available so people can access shared resources over the internet? or do I have to setup something like a ftp server?

The applications are managed through a dashboard available through any web browser at http://hda. I have succesfully tried this with Windows IE, Firefox, and Chrome. For File sharing you will need to either map the shares to your client (if working internally) or VPN into the HDA (if working outside your external network).

[BitRausch]

Thank you for pointing this out petercross.
If I understand you correctly then I have to give people a vpn access to the network and restrict them to the shared folders? Can I restrict them to just this folders or will they have access to other resources?
I guess its a matter of user rights correct?
Basically I would like to give family members access to pictures and downloads. That was done through a WebSite by the WHS and I was wondering if there is any similar possibility with amahi. But that is just convinience not a show stopper.

[pjcrux]

You can set the permissions for the shares in the HDA dashboard when you setup the folders as well as you can set each user to read, write, or read/write when you establish them.

[lou1z]

and if they get adito going, you will have what you want. https login with rdp, vnc, ssh and more. there are other backup programs that you can use that are not yet included here but can be run under the hood eg mondoarchive.

once you see the apps they have here, you will be sold on amahi. my favourites are ampache and squeezecentre but there are plenty that i haven't tried yet. amahi beats whs hands down.

[BitRausch]

Thank you for your reply lou1z.
I will start setting up my amahi server this weekend. I was wondering if you have any suggestions/recommendations regarding following questions:

1) Is it possible to setup my own homepage/web server (maybe apache or so...) on amahi?
2) I do not run my server 24/7 so I was wondering if I can do something like WOL and also put the server into standby mode on a specific time
3) currently I am using my router for providing/updating my DynDNS address. Is it required to do DynDNS over amahi?
4) Since energy consumption is one of my concerns I am wondering if intel speedstep ist supported by fedora 10/amahi (I believe so but I am not sure)
5) As I understand amahi is using Samba. What kind of network speed can I expect? (I am running all my machines on a Gigabit Network with 2 Netgear Gigabit Switches (SOHO grade) and a mix of Realtek and Intel NIC's on 4 machines )
6) I am running a vmware esxi 3.5 with a couple of windows vm's. Can I use amahi as a NFS storage or iSCSI storage?
7) How difficult is it to repair a linux raid based on LVM? (my board does not support raid and I do not have any slot left for a hardware raid card)

I know - i am asking a lot of questions but after the last couple of days I want to make sure that I do not need to setup a server again for a VERY long time . And if I need hardware then I would buy it now and not once the server is running .

My goal is to have a server for data storage and sharing files over the internet. I do not do any multimedia streaming.

Thank you for all the answers and informations you gave me so far. It is appreciated very much.

Kind regards
BitRausch

[lou1z]

apols for late reply as i'm working on a critical project that is about to go live.
in answer to your questions....
the base of the system is fedora so i would imagine that you can do anything that a fedora based system can do. amahi is the front end (to basically describe it) and a very good one at that.
i would keep using your router to front your dyndns although amahi does come with one.
you will have no probs with samba. it's tried and tested. your intels will perform better than your realteks which have been known to have issues. i always use intels now.
fedora can be used for nfs and iscsi. you will need to go into fedora for this.
software raid..... not sure. don't use it.
you certainly are using a strange setup by asking to use esx3.5 with amahi as a nas/san. you would be better using openfiler as the nas/san and running amahi as a vm.

[cpg]

Hi, we have WOL, wake on lan, support now!